Is it time to re-define your data strategy?

Oct 22, 2018

“Most institutions are data rich and information poor,” claims this University Business article. This is a major issue that we’ve discussed in previous blog posts. Frankly, we’ve discovered that many institutions simply aren’t using their student data to their full potential. Student data can provide deeper insight into learning activities and even serve to predict at-risk behavior. Data can be leveraged to identify inefficiencies within your organization. Data drawn from your learning management system (LMS) can also be mined for reports to reveal successful enrolment and retention tactics. We’re making it our mission to ensure that administrators and educators are made aware of the impact that student data can have on student as well as institutional success.

“With data drawn from Brightspace, we can intervene with an at-risk student even before they’re aware they’re at risk.”

Student data analysis encourages a more personalized education

Having access to data provides insight to many different sets of eyes in your organization. This allows many stakeholders to closely monitor each individual student’s history and course activities. Armed with this knowledge, your team can be proactive in assigning exactly the right person at the right time to deliver individualized attention to each student. And this is how data analysis intersects with student success as well as retention and completion rates. When the data is gathered under a single view, it can provide a detailed look into how students are doing and provide educators with a suggested best course of action.

“Data drawn from Brightspace allows A&M-Commerce to get a granular view of how students are progressing, right down to individual grades all the way up to overall retention and completion metrics.”

-James Fountain, Executive Director for the Institute for Competency-Based Education at Texas A&M University-Commerce. (read the full story)

Streamline your data strategy to access, analyze, and act

Some organizations are facing challenges when it comes to being able to access, analyze, and act upon the data currently available to them. Siloed databases make it difficult to establish a successful data strategy because the IT lift is simply too great or there are gaps in the system. A great approach to a successful strategy is to focus on:

Adoption

Engagement

Assessment

Outcomes

These are the areas that produce the most questions, and where data can provide insightful answers. Adoption and engagement are the early indicators of a successful rollout of the LMS. Analyzing assessments and outcomes next are key to both helping students succeed, and also supporting research on institutional success.

“With many different sets of eyes on the student’s history and course data, they can collaborate to determine who might be the best person to reach out to a student who may be struggling. This means that students receive the kind of individualized care and attention that might not be possible at another institution, increasing their chances of completing programs and achieving life-long, student success.”

The benefits of a vendor partner in your data strategy

You are an expert at understanding the unique needs of your organization. D2L is an expert at the Brightspace platform. We are fluent in the languages of technology as well as education and business, which means we can help you uncover and patch the gaps that might exist in your current data strategy. Our services team provides support to institutions to initially access their data. From there we help with analysis and coordinate with our clients to ensure the most impactful actions are made to improve the overall health of the organization.

Our creative services team can work with course designers to build unique requirements into course offerings or simply serve as subject matter experts. It depends on what your organization needs to succeed.

Talk to us today to learn more about our Data Solutions Consulting Packages and how Brightspace can provide the data needed for making informed educational and institutional decisions.

“D2L was given a perfect score for student performance and retention because it has moved beyond basic reporting and alerts, and no other Online Learning Platform vendor has grasped predictive analytics in the way D2L has.”